OVP: Two Days, One Night (2014)

Film: Two Days, One Night (2014)
Stars: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salee, Olivier Gourmet, Christelle Cornil
Director: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Marion Cotillard)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

As someone who recently experienced layoffs first-hand, there's something weird about watching it onscreen, as it's one of those rare instances where I think that the movies almost undersell it.  Layoffs can be extremely difficult personally, affecting both those let go and those that are losing their jobs.  And so I view Two Days, One Night through a different lens as a result of this personal experience, wondering about which of these characters I would be, and really what I would do if I was Sandra (Cotillard) wondering what the right decision would be to keep my job.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in a small town in Belgium, where Sandra has recently found out that she, after an extended medical leave, has been laid off from her job in what appears to be a relatively shady dealing.  Apparently her manager has told the employees that they can either have a bonus of 1000 euros or they can keep Sandra as their coworker.  Being that Sandra works so close to the poverty line, she desperately needs to keep her job, but being that her coworkers also work so close to the poverty line, the 1000 euro bonus is in many cases just as necessary for them to receive.

The film follows Sandra trying to convince nine of her sixteen coworkers to change their minds, and we get one of the coolest ticking clock structures I've seen in a film in a long time.  For starters, with the exception of Sandra and her husband Manu (Rongione, who is a frequent collaborator with the Dardenne Brothers), we rarely see characters in multiple scenes, which is not really how a traditional story structure works-frequently we find that characters have changes of heart and that we come back to them, but here people who won't open their door for Sandra or who dismiss her out-of-hand don't change their minds.  The Dardennes tend to find realism in the most uncomfortable of places, and that is definitely true here-we get little redemption for characters we dismiss out-of-hand.

And we get little indication that the directors dislike these people.  While some of them are completely dismissive of Sandra, there are others who clearly sympathize with her.  They know that by-the-grace-of-god they too could be amongst the laid off and be in her situation.  And yet they cannot give up that money-lower income citizens have become a hot topic in film lately, with more and more films not about homeless people, but those who live paycheck-to-paycheck, frequently struggling to make a living (the have and have-nots of the 99% movement-you see it in films like Leviathan and Winter Sleep as well).  This is a film that examines how a thousand euros, which to characters in a lot of movies would not be a dire situation, can be an enormous impact on fixing a house or paying for a medical procedure.  You see that in the way that they approach Sandra, knowing the right thing would be to forego the bonus to let her keep the job, but the reality is that they may not be able to afford it.

Sandra herself as a protagonist is a fresh of breath air, with Cotillard not playing her as an Erin Brockovich-style hero, all ballsy and ready-to-take-on-the-world, but as pretty mousy.  This is someone who has suffered from severe depression, is regularly prone to suicide attempts, and without the push of her husband, would have just laid in bed and let her fate befall her.  It's a risky move on the part of the directors to have a character we may not even like at the center, but it's definitely one of the cooler aspects of the film-we even see that Sandra herself knows that this may be pointless and unfair of her to ask-it's pretty obvious that, despite the bonus-for-job deal that eventually someone from the line will get cut, and if it's not her it will be someone in a similar boat.

The film itself has a lot of cool ideas, but I have to admit that the movie didn't quite compel in the way I expected, which is why after what looks like a rave I'm sticking with three stars.  After you get into the pattern of the unusual story beats, you start seeing where this is going (it's quite obvious pretty quickly that Sandra will either score a partial victory, which is the case, or no victory at all), and despite her lack of esteem early in the film and the wandering way she goes about to get there, she ends on a pretty peachy note that doesn't quite match the movie (though considering what she's just been through, perhaps this was necessary-a sad ending may have been too much dour).  Cotillard herself is so naturalistic and wonderful in everything that I have to say that the abject raves she received here surprised me, considering she's been doing (even better work, in my opinion) in things like Rust & Bone.  Still, it's an uncharacteristically small movie that got nominated for an Oscar, so I can't really hate on that even I may still have picked Jennifer Aniston for the nomination (though I'd have chucked out Felicity Jones and kept Cotillard, or if we're being ballsy I'd have gone with...you know, I'll save a couple of cards for when we get to this OVP write-up).

With our return to afternoon reviews, I hopefully picked one that you've seen (or at least heard of), so if you have, what are your thoughts?  What do you think of the trend to show lower income struggles on the screen, and what feels authentic/inauthentic about this movement?  And where does Marion rank against Felicity, Reese, Rosamund, and Juli for Best Actress of 2014?  Share in the comments!